Many in railroad preservation and specifically steam locomotive preservation and operation know that the locomotives they rebuild every 15 years or 1472 days are not the same engines that they were when the railroad ran or retired them.

Components of the engine have been replaced, augmented or changed in the lifetimes of many locomotives still operating today. As a whole and on first glance an operating 2-8-2 may look just like its former self in a history book, but we know that the "fabric" is considerably lessened with each rebuild and each season that goes by.

I think when you have a locomotive -- a machine built to move -- and you preserve it, preservation in one sense may be to preserve its purpose and the realization of that purpose, but we know that operating a steam locomotive is probably the worst thing you could do to it because you erode the historical integrity of the machine, and make it "less" like the original model history. In large part, we are operating steam locomotives that are "historic" and "preserved" by aesthetics and function only.

I would lean toward considering that the operation of steam locomotives today is akin to adaptive reuse -- a freight house turned into a farmers market still a) completes its role as a structure b) looks how it looked when built and a steam locomotive today a) still operates by steam and b) looks comparative to what it did when the builders rolled it out.

The railroads modified, rebuilt, kit-bashed, un-made and remade their own locomotives for a century. Was the Reading destroying history when it kit-bashed Consolidations into Northerns? Are any steam locomotive operators today guilty of the same for improving or altering their locomotives, rebuilding boilers, fireboxes, running gear, air pumps, water systems? There are few choo's untouched in a combination of preservation and adaptive reuse.

KL

It made Yahoo news today:

http://news.yahoo.com/steam-trains-clean-energy-track-200700298.html

Whooee! Something like 108 comments with that, and some of them as silly as can be. My personal favorite, for its spirit, was:

"down with the EPA, up with STEAM LOCOMOTIVES....."

(This is even though I applaud the results of the EPA; we have forgotten how bad air quality and water quality once were. Remember the river catching on fire in Ohio years ago?)

Close second is this part of another:

"I propose we set up a bio-coal plant just outside Washington D.C.

"With the amount of (expletive deleted) generated at our nation's capitol, we could power the entire globe with clean energy in just 1 year!"

Those comments and others ("Steampunks unite!") are the most entertaining part of the article!

They say they will equip this modernized locomotive with a HEP generator driven by a steam turbine. How large of a package would it require for a turbogenerator for HEP power? Could that unit fit into a box that was say 4’ x 4’ x 8’ ? Or would it require a larger package size? Where would it be mounted?

A HEP generator driven by a steam turbine or any other generator driven by a steam turbine needs high pressure superheated steam in order to be efficient. A fire tube locomotive boiler can generate superheated steam but not at pressure high enough to be particularly thermally or energy efficient. The entire proposal seems to be loaded with political and social attractive buzz words. I think if the plan is carried out it will result in much wasted money and a cut up locomotive. To begin with a large steam locomotive is not a practical or sensible test bed.
A more practical plan would be to start by building a stationary boiler and combustion system to learn what has to be corrected before they attempt to run at 130 MPH.
The plans seem to convey much enthusiasm, but not much knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics or much else about engineering.
The ideas expressed by the planners of this project can be filed next to cold fusion and perpetual motion.
I would recomend a court injunction to prevent these people from cutting up the locomotive

On what grounds would a court issue such an injunction? As far as I can tell this is not a protected artifact under law... The owners could scrap it if they wanted much like the Santa Fe scraped the others of the class, and where this one was headed before the current project based on the care (or lack there of) it had recieved.

If preservation could be assured by a court injunction, I suspect we would see railfan's everywhere lining up at their favorite lawyer's office, to save the last F-40, the last phase II SW 900... the last C5a West Podunk and Southern railway caboose...

Sticking this locomotive in a park, 50 years ago was not preservation... It was just delayed scrapping with out paint, a roof, and care... and it wasn't receiving those.

Maybe we need view this project with the same standards we do, when an unused passenger station gets repainted and repaired, and turned into a Italian restaurant complete with a stripped street car body.

Randy

Rollerman,

I agree with many of your comments, but I am just wondering about this HEP generator, since it is a specific part of the plan. I assume that a steam turbogenerator for HEP power would be far larger and higher horsepower than a conventional steam locomotive turbogenerator. Aren't diesel HEP generators on modern locomtives something like 500 horsepower?

I suppose a steam trurbine generator of that size could be mounted on the tender, but then you would have to pipe superheated steam to it through an articulated pipe joint.

I don't know what the horsepower or KW rating was, but the Central of New Jersey had head-end power in the steam era. This was for the commuter trains with their many stops; the normal axle-driven generators couldn't keep batteries charged in that service, so the road went for what we now call HEP with a large turbogenerator on the tender, and got the benefit of lighter, easier to pull cars as well (no battery weight, no generator drag on axles).

This turbogenerator setup, mounted on the tender and including what looks like a muffler of some sort on the turbine, is visible in this Green Frog video clip of CNJ 774 on an excursion in the 1950s, most notably in the first sequence as the engine is backed onto the train. Also take note of the pilot on the tender, for reverse running at speed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDmNAu0v__g

And now the famous $64.00 question; how big was the load that generator could handle (which was likely for lights only), and how big would the load be today, with lighting, air conditioning, and heating?

Did a little more looking around, and now we have some idea of modern HEP loads, but that still doesn't tell us what the load and capacity were for the CNJ steam-era set-up. Perhaps there is a CNJ historian out there who knows. . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_end_power

http://trn.trains.com/en/sitecore/conte ... power.aspx

http://www.nwrail.com/HEP_config.html

J3a-614,

Thanks for posting that video. It sure enough is a big turbogenerator, but it fits nicely on the tender. It looks like the generator is a lot larger than the turbine. It is an interesting video with that fantrip action. The camelback is nice to see in action.

In looking at the averages drawn by amtrak train sets, i would be curious to know what type of steam demand would be required by a turbine generator capable of between 250-300kw. This is assuming the train only being 8-10 cars long.


Anyone have any idea in pounds per hour at 300psi?

I was the Superintendent of Maintenance at the C&H Sugar Refinery in Aiea for a while. We had a 50,000 lb/hr 300 psi B&W FM style water tube boiler with 600F superheat (about the size of a boxcar). 35,000 lb/hr of steam to the turbine made 1000 kW exhausting to 15 psi process steam. Basically about 35 lb/kW.

That's good info for reference. This locomotive boiler should produce steam of similar conditions (hopefully with a little more superheat after modifications, maybe about 725 deg. F) and the turbine would be exhausting to atmosphere or a low backpressure Lempor or Lemprex exhaust, say about 5 PSI typical back pressure. These factors would improve its efficiency somewhat over the turbine Matt worked with.

My SWAG would be it'd use about 8,000 lb/hour of steam, maybe 10% of the boiler output of this locomotive after modifications. That's a lot of steam, but it would seem to be a workable arrangement. You could always shut the turbine generator off for speed record attempts.

Of course, in the interest of carbon-neutrality, you could attempt to dramatically reduce the HEP demands by converting all passenger rolling stock to LED lighting and solar-powered heating. I figure, get a good grant writer and you could carry out said conversion for about $250K per passenger car..........

It's worth pointing out that the group's website does not specifically say they'll use a turbine:



A small, enclosed reciprocating steam engine is another possibility, such as those made by Spilling (http://www.spilling.de/english/index.php). Depending on load and steam conditions, reciprocating engines can have a better steam rate than turbines.